Grist to the mill

Do you think that the environmental movement should focus more on problems of human suffering and disease?

Follow the arguments….

YES – We really need to do a better job of prioritizing the problems we address as a global community. e.g. Curing the world’s most terrible diseases and many other important issues, such as providing clean drinking water for all. Only when those problems are being adequately addressed should we then turn our attention to the next tier of problems, no matter how pressing they may seem to some. This includes many environmental concerns, which I specialize in.

NO – To get back to your point, “the environment” is not some isolated entity that we can turn our attention to once we’ve “cured disease.” Environment is the engine that creates disease and health for the earth’s creatures, including bipedal mammals.

Vote at GristMill http://gristmill.grist.org/

Obesity gene map

Welcome to the expanded electronic version of the Human Obesity Gene Map.
http://obesitygene.pbrc.edu/

More on obese gene

James Randerson, science correspondent
Friday April 13, 2007 The Guardian
http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,2056514,00.html

Huge health backlash feared over ‘fat gene’ discovery
Apr 14 2007
Western Mail
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_headline=huge-health-backlash-feared-over–fat-gene–discovery&method=full&objectid=18904807&siteid=50082-name_page.html

Keep politics out of science – and vice versa

Whether it is right or wrong, true or junk, science should never be prostituted for political ends. By Brendan O’Neill
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/2999/
Since Channel 4 aired Martin Durkin’s film The Great Global Warming Swindle on 8 March, in which various scientists questioned the scientific consensus that manmade carbon emissions are causing global warming, there has been an increasingly shrill spat between mainstream climate change scientists and an ever-dwindling number of climate change sceptics.
The problem, however, is that this scientific consensus is being used by the powers-that-be to justify all sorts of inhumane, illiberal and repressive political measures, often with the support, or at least complicity, of the scientists.
History shows us that the mixing of science and values, the use and abuse of science to direct the political and social life of a society, is never a good idea. It is bad for politics, and it is bad for science.

Matthias’ blog

Response to articles in the Economist – Good Food and Voting with Your Shopping Trolley
http://www.stuermer.ch/blog/two-unbelieveably-weak-articles-in-the-economist.html

Obese gene

According to Prof. O’Rahilly’s work at Cambridge University, genetic mutation to a brain receptor impairs the ability to feel full. The mutation has been found in: 1 in 1,000 of the population and 1 in 100-200 obese people.
The Times, Saturday 3 March, page 13,

Can organic feed the world?

Worldwatch Institute
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/3918

John Ikerd

New artcles
http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/Faculty/JIkerd/papers/

Can’t buy me justice

During Fairtrade Fortnight, ‘ethical shopping’ might reduce Western guilt but it does little to reduce Third World poverty.
Nathalie Rothschild – Sp!ked – 2 March 2007
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/2909/

Connor

Boy of eight who weighs 14st may be taken from his family. At a meeting tomorrow, his mother Nicola McKeown must convince officials that she has not abused her son by allowing him to grow so fat.
“By the time he was 18 months, he was in age five clothes. And when he was five, he was more than nine stone.” Mum
“I’ve asked the doctors to check him, but they can’t seem to find anything wrong.” Mum
A spokesman for North Tyneside Council and North Tyneside Primary Care Trust said they had worked with the family for some time, and were concerned about Connor’s health and wellbeing.So, it seems a bit harsh that:
by BETH HALE
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=438434&in_page_id=1770

Industry vs. public sector food labelling system

Industry criticised over controversial new guidelines on fat, salt and sugar.
Felicity Lawrence, The Guardian, Thursday February 15, 2007.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2013427,00.html#article_continue

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming

An Event Hosted by CEI and the Heritage Foundation
by Christopher C. HornerFebruary 13, 2007
http://www.cei.org/gencon/003,05768.cfm

DEFRA-funded research on local / organic

DEFRA study highlights challenges of “sustainable consumption”

4th February 2007

Eco-conscious consumers may believe that by shopping locally and buying organic food, they are minimising the effect of their consumption on the environment – but a report produced by Manchester Business School for DEFRA (Department of Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs), concludes that this may not be the case.

http://www.mbs.ac.uk/news/04-02-2007.htm?rssHP

The Catherine Tate Show

The Aga Saga Woman is a middle class English woman who goes into a state of shock in various, seemingly harmless, situations. For example she receives a phone call from her husband’s business associate and has to tell her children that “daddy hasn’t been able to find any good brie” on his business trip to France, thereby jeopardising the school fete, and when she discovers that the eggs being used for the school’s sports’ day egg race are not organic, she calls a stop to the whole thing at once!
The title of the sketch is a pun on the stereotype of the pretentious middle classes having an Aga oven at home. The Aga Saga Woman is later named as “Mrs Montgomery” in Series wo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catherine_Tate_Show

Voting with your trolley

HAS the supermarket trolley dethroned the ballot box? Voter turnout in most developed countries has fallen in recent decades, but sales of organic, Fairtrade and local food—each with its own political agenda—are growing fast. Such food allows shoppers to express their political opinions, from concern for the environment to support for poor farmers, every time they buy groceries.…
‘Voting with your trolley’, Dec 7th 2006, The Economist print edition

Is this what you call junk food?

Hamburgers are seen as the archetypal ‘junk food’. According to Peter Marsh, of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, which studies food and obesity issues, the term “junk” has become “simply a matter of aesthetics”, a way of disapproving of certain foods. “Some may argue that it is a matter of content levels of fat, sugar and salt,” he says. “But in that case, foie gras, Iles Flotants, most pates and so on are also junk.”

By Brendan O’Neill http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6187234.stm

 

Fat, salt, sugar

It is now 10 years since Sustain, a better food and farming campaign, first appealed to the food industry to show more responsibility – an appeal echoed by medical colleges, MPs and the chief medical officer – yet our food is still saturated with too much sugar, salt and fat.
Britain’s Big Issue, Leader, Wednesday November 17, 2004, The Guardian

The Farepak scandal lays bare a gross inequality

If ever there were a time for ministers to open the debate on the huge gulf between rich and poor, this is it. Instead: silence.
Polly Toynbee, The Guardian, Tuesday November 14, 2006

Climate change demo

Tuesday 7 November 2006, Brendan O’Neill 

March of midde-class miserabilists.

Strip away the singing and dancing, and Saturday’s climate change demo was a demand for less debate and more authoritarianism.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2071/

Save the planet, don’t see the world?

This debate made me realise exactly why winning the argument against environmentalist politics is important, not just because cheaper, more efficient transport systems are the mark of a civilised, developed society, where people enjoy what Brendan O’Neill in his opening comments called the ‘tangible freedom’ of flying.
Shirley Dent, Spiked seminar, London, 23 May 2006, posted 2 June 2006
http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2006-01/seeworld.htm